Written by: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
On December 29, influential trader Eugene Ng Ah Sio in the cryptocurrency community published a forecast and expectations for the first quarter of 2025 on X, predicting that ETH will be the best-performing mainstream token in the next quarter.
Eugene first mentioned three reasons for being bullish on ETH: technical trends; Trump's favor (especially WLF's substantial buying in the Ethereum ecosystem); Base ecosystem development status. He then reiterated that since Trump's election, the inflow of funds into spot Ethereum ETFs has undergone a 180-degree turnaround.
ETF fund flows: Is Ethereum more favored?
Eugene did not exaggerate; SoSoValue data shows that since Trump's election victory on November 6, the inflow of funds into spot Ethereum ETFs has significantly increased, with the growth trend even surpassing that of Bitcoin spot ETFs during the same period.
Entering late December, this trend has become even more apparent.
SoSoValue data shows that during the last trading week (Eastern Time December 23 to December 27), the spot Ethereum ETF had a net inflow of $349 million; while during the same period, the Bitcoin spot ETF had a net outflow of $388 million - this significant difference in fund flows may suggest better expectations for ETH in the future.
As of the publication date, the official ETF inflow/outflow data for this Monday has not been fully released, but according to Lookonchain's on-chain monitoring, yesterday, ten U.S. Bitcoin ETFs had a net outflow of 3,000 BTC ($275.59 million); nine Ethereum ETFs had a net inflow of 16,359 ETH ($54.33 million), and the trend seems to remain unchanged.
Trump concept family bucket
In addition to the ETF liquidity data, another reason supporting ETH expectations is the ongoing accumulation by the Trump family project WLFI.
In the past period, WLFI has successively bought multiple Ethereum ecosystem tokens including AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO, but the largest holding in the project remains ETH.
Although this is somewhat related to the fact that WIFI is deployed within the Ethereum ecosystem, the phrase 'The president is on board, what are you hesitating for?' still has a strong FOMO effect.
Looking back at historical data, will the script repeat?
Coinglass data shows that in the first quarter of the new year following historical U.S. elections and Bitcoin halving cycles, ETH performed the best, especially in the first quarters of 2017 and 2021, where ETH rose by 518% and 161% respectively, even outperforming BTC's returns in these two quarters (11.9%, 103.2%).
If history repeats itself, ETH may see a significant rise in Q1 next year.
Potential Beta options
If ETH can indeed rise as hoped, some Ethereum ecosystem tokens may become higher risk/reward Beta options, such as:
Trump concept coin portfolio: AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO;
Grayscale Top 20 options: LINK, UNI, AAVE, ENA, OP, LDO;
ETF staking expectations may have potential benefits: LDO, EIGEN, RPL, SSV;
Top AI concepts in the Ethereum ecosystem: VIRTUAL, GAME, AIXBT;
Odaily Note: The above tokens are only examples from specific sectors and concepts and do not constitute investment advice.
Counterpoint
Although many well-known investors/traders, including Eugene, have clearly expressed bullish views on ETH, there are also voices holding a pessimistic attitude towards ETH's future performance.
10x Research founder Markus Thielen painted a more pessimistic scenario, predicting that ETH will continue to underperform and will not reach a historical high in a 'hawkish' macro environment in 2025: 'We expect a more conservative outlook for ETH in 2025. Unlike previous years, the initial hawkish policies may be tested by weakening liquidity tailwinds.'
During this period of severe market fluctuations, predictions made by various parties are merely 'one-sided conclusions' based on their respective conditions and indicators; no one can predict the future, and everyone should remember to DYOR before acting.
